oops, i did it again? (and a rant)
I did some more writing (let that be the last we hear about that dread word, I prithee), and experienced more mood swings. Next thing I know I had a new shirt and four new pairs of pants. They're very nice. I'm very happy with them. I am also very, very bemused with my brain.
Another thing that amused and bemused me -- while I was at the mall's parking lot, at least a mile away from any grocery store I know of, I saw a single, very large potato sitting very carefully on one of the concrete bumpers. It was adorable! I felt like it was saying, "Humph! I like it here, so what? A potato can't get some sun?"
Last week I chatted with a friend from Russia. Everyone I meet here tells me that Chinese is a very difficult language. Okay, fine. I understand that the characters are hard to memorize and the tones are hard to hear and to reproduce and there are probably a dozen other things I'm not thinking of. But behind that statement is always an implied "European languages are easier to learn." Well, yeah, if you already know one European language!
For a Chinese speaker, many sounds in non-Chinese languages are very difficult. I had several advantages -- I immigrated to the US when I was young, I have a good ear for sounds, AND I spent several YEARS practicing every day, in public and private. I still remember the -- oh, year or so -- I spent in front of various mirrors, going "th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th..." Yeah, I felt pretty dumb then, too -- not to mention discouraged. And "th" wasn't the only consonant I had trouble with, and then there were the vowels. Of course, soon enough I realized that I had a Queens accent as thick as Fran Drescher's and had to do a lot of work to get over THAT.
Also, what's up with using gendered pronouns and distinguishing between singulars and plurals, anyway? I hate the whole he/she thing. Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, so I don't have to figure out whether "Casey" on my roster is a man or a woman before I refer to him or her. He/She is a person. In poetry some gender and tense ambiguities can actually be incredibly powerful -- but untranslatable into English. For example, I once had to translate a poem about Hua Mulan (yeah, the Disney movie one), but the whole point was that she was a cross-dresser whose gender was indeterminate for her entire military career, neither a man nor a woman, both a man and a woman! I consulted several translations by leading Sinologists, and I must say we all did a clunky job. I cannot tell you how much I hate -- still do -- conjugation. I hate that the following four sentences are not interchangeable: "the flower is pretty," "the flower was pretty," "the flowers are pretty," "the flowers were pretty." Guess what? Over a billion Chinese people don't get confused -- usually the context makes it pretty clear what is meant, and again, it can make for very powerful multiple interpretations in literature.
And this is the part that made my Russian friend marvel -- and believe that Chinese can be a straightforward language in some ways. You know what else I hated when I was learning English? How many different words there were for everything. The best example that comes to mind is numbered things. There are numbers -- one, two, three, etc. Then there are numbers when you want to order something -- first, second, third, etc. Then there are days of the week -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. Then there are the months of the year -- January, February, March, etc.
Deep breath.
WHY?!?!?! Do you know how many pages I had to fill with my horrible handwriting to memorize how all these words are spelled?!?!?!?! Chinese uses just one set of characters for all these. AND -- AND -- why must there be both "a" and "an"? God it was annoying to have to remember when to use which.
This is why I refuse to ever learn another language unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. And ugh -- languages where chairs and stuff have genders? Uh-uh, no way, fugetaboutit. I know it's totally natural to those who grew up with those languages, just like tones are natural to me. But just as tones can seem impossibly hard to a non-Chinese speaker, properties of non-Chinese and non-English languages can seem daunting to me. I do not therefore say that French is harder than English or that German is harder than Chinese -- I just have no intention to learn them in the foreseeable future, that's all.
ETA: One complaint I hear about Chinese from SO many non-Chinese friends who claim that "they would learn Chinese except..." is that they're afraid that if they mispronounce something, they'll end up saying something really weird or offensive. Here's what I have to say about that. First, if you mispronounce something, 99% of the time it will just sound like senseless syllables. Moreover, as you get frustrated that people don't understand what you think is identical to the tape or the teacher, they'll sound like progressively louder and slower senseless syllables. Second, in the very rare case that you do say something meaningful -- but wrong -- your Chinese interlocutor will not take offense. Come on. They'll know from your pronunciation and that "I don't know what I'm doing" look on your face that you don't know what you're doing, and probably suspect that you have just been the victim of a prank. Finally -- there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Both new learners and native speakers make bad typos ALL THE TIME. Ever notice how f is next to d on the keyboard, as in duck? Or how with an extra twitch, as gains another s? It's just not the end of the world to make a mistake, and the type of mistakes that tend to be made does not make Chinese special.
Thanks for today: my left foot and my right foot. They may be slightly different in size, but they make a very cute and helpful couple.
Another thing that amused and bemused me -- while I was at the mall's parking lot, at least a mile away from any grocery store I know of, I saw a single, very large potato sitting very carefully on one of the concrete bumpers. It was adorable! I felt like it was saying, "Humph! I like it here, so what? A potato can't get some sun?"
Last week I chatted with a friend from Russia. Everyone I meet here tells me that Chinese is a very difficult language. Okay, fine. I understand that the characters are hard to memorize and the tones are hard to hear and to reproduce and there are probably a dozen other things I'm not thinking of. But behind that statement is always an implied "European languages are easier to learn." Well, yeah, if you already know one European language!
For a Chinese speaker, many sounds in non-Chinese languages are very difficult. I had several advantages -- I immigrated to the US when I was young, I have a good ear for sounds, AND I spent several YEARS practicing every day, in public and private. I still remember the -- oh, year or so -- I spent in front of various mirrors, going "th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th..." Yeah, I felt pretty dumb then, too -- not to mention discouraged. And "th" wasn't the only consonant I had trouble with, and then there were the vowels. Of course, soon enough I realized that I had a Queens accent as thick as Fran Drescher's and had to do a lot of work to get over THAT.
Also, what's up with using gendered pronouns and distinguishing between singulars and plurals, anyway? I hate the whole he/she thing. Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, so I don't have to figure out whether "Casey" on my roster is a man or a woman before I refer to him or her. He/She is a person. In poetry some gender and tense ambiguities can actually be incredibly powerful -- but untranslatable into English. For example, I once had to translate a poem about Hua Mulan (yeah, the Disney movie one), but the whole point was that she was a cross-dresser whose gender was indeterminate for her entire military career, neither a man nor a woman, both a man and a woman! I consulted several translations by leading Sinologists, and I must say we all did a clunky job. I cannot tell you how much I hate -- still do -- conjugation. I hate that the following four sentences are not interchangeable: "the flower is pretty," "the flower was pretty," "the flowers are pretty," "the flowers were pretty." Guess what? Over a billion Chinese people don't get confused -- usually the context makes it pretty clear what is meant, and again, it can make for very powerful multiple interpretations in literature.
And this is the part that made my Russian friend marvel -- and believe that Chinese can be a straightforward language in some ways. You know what else I hated when I was learning English? How many different words there were for everything. The best example that comes to mind is numbered things. There are numbers -- one, two, three, etc. Then there are numbers when you want to order something -- first, second, third, etc. Then there are days of the week -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. Then there are the months of the year -- January, February, March, etc.
Deep breath.
WHY?!?!?! Do you know how many pages I had to fill with my horrible handwriting to memorize how all these words are spelled?!?!?!?! Chinese uses just one set of characters for all these. AND -- AND -- why must there be both "a" and "an"? God it was annoying to have to remember when to use which.
This is why I refuse to ever learn another language unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. And ugh -- languages where chairs and stuff have genders? Uh-uh, no way, fugetaboutit. I know it's totally natural to those who grew up with those languages, just like tones are natural to me. But just as tones can seem impossibly hard to a non-Chinese speaker, properties of non-Chinese and non-English languages can seem daunting to me. I do not therefore say that French is harder than English or that German is harder than Chinese -- I just have no intention to learn them in the foreseeable future, that's all.
ETA: One complaint I hear about Chinese from SO many non-Chinese friends who claim that "they would learn Chinese except..." is that they're afraid that if they mispronounce something, they'll end up saying something really weird or offensive. Here's what I have to say about that. First, if you mispronounce something, 99% of the time it will just sound like senseless syllables. Moreover, as you get frustrated that people don't understand what you think is identical to the tape or the teacher, they'll sound like progressively louder and slower senseless syllables. Second, in the very rare case that you do say something meaningful -- but wrong -- your Chinese interlocutor will not take offense. Come on. They'll know from your pronunciation and that "I don't know what I'm doing" look on your face that you don't know what you're doing, and probably suspect that you have just been the victim of a prank. Finally -- there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Both new learners and native speakers make bad typos ALL THE TIME. Ever notice how f is next to d on the keyboard, as in duck? Or how with an extra twitch, as gains another s? It's just not the end of the world to make a mistake, and the type of mistakes that tend to be made does not make Chinese special.
Thanks for today: my left foot and my right foot. They may be slightly different in size, but they make a very cute and helpful couple.